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Despite one of the driest summers on record… a level 3 drought condition was decalred by the local Conservation Authority, on site irrigation helped to produce one of the better years for the Napanee Community Food Bank Garden.

Farewell Dog River Saskatchewan. We visited the set of Corner Gas on August 30th 2006, located in Rouleau Saskatchewan (south of Regina). It was great! The image above is one of many that we took.
Today we see news that the set has been torn down.

“The tank has run dry on an iconic piece of Saskatchewan’s landscape. After more than 10years, the Corner Gas set near Rouleau, Sask. was torn down on Friday.
The set was built in 2003 to shoot 13 episodes of the CTV show Corner Gas. The first episode aired in January of 2004, and when Corner Gas became an overnight sensation, the set stood for six seasons and a movie.”
http://regina.ctvnews.ca/end-of-the-line-for-dog-river-corner-gas-set-torn-down-in-sask-1.3146178

Today (Friday 2016 Oct 28) will be an announcement from Elon Musk about the Tesla Powerwall. This is a very interesting concept of storing power in your home and trying to lower the total cost of power. In our area, we are billed with time-of-use, which ranges from offpeak @18 cents, midpeak @26 cents and onpeak @36cents per kwh.

One obvious use of the powerwall is to charge it up during the offpeak (it will hold up to 6.4kwh) and use that power during the onpeak and midpeak times. How much would it cost and how much would it save for an average 30kwh/day use?

tesla powerwall 1.0 $3500 US for 6.4KwH = $4700Can plus installation
Our 30day average use is

assume 100% offpeak = 21-18= 3 cents saving per khw * 30kwh/day minimum? = $1/day
The powerwall has 5000 charge cycles or 10 year warranty.
365*10=3650 days * $1 = $3650
This does not even cover the cost of the battery, much less installation.

What happens if we conserve more and try 24kwh/day = $0.75/day = $2740.
OK, how about if we start using more power? and try 40kwh/day = $1.20/day * 3650= $4380
This is almost the cost of the battery. so still no real savings.

The other issue is that is the 6.4kwh capacity of the battery enough to run all use during mid and onpeak?
At our 30kwh/day use, 74% is at offpeak, leaving 26% at mid or onpeak, which is 30kwh/day*.26=7.8kwh, or not enough capacity. So the cost saving numbers come out even worse. We would have to reduce our daily average down to 25kwh/day with the same percentage breakdown to achieve the 6.4kwh. And the powerwall capacity would also reduce over time with age.

What about adding in solar panels to help charge? Assume that the going price is $3/watt. Also assume only 5 hours/day production of power.

Add in one 100w solar panel for $300. 100W*5 hours/day = 0.5kw/day from default 30kwh/day = 29.5kwh/day or 1.7% saving for about $300 cost – and we come up even.

add in 2kw of panelsfor $6000 *5 hours/day = 10kwh/day from default 30kwh/day = 20kwh/day or 35% saving for about $6000 cost plus install.
So it seems that solar panels may be able to pay for themselves alone in 10 years, with no financial surplus to help cover the battery.

Things are not looking good for this system.
If you are on the grid now, there is no business case for this. If you have a lot of power outages, it would make a great backup system.
If the price of power doubles, so would our savings ($3650*2=7300) and that would pay for the cost of the battery plus installation (estimated $7000).

One can only hope the price of the powerwall drops, the Canadian Dollar rises, the price of solar panels drop and the price of power rises (only that last is a bad thing!).

The new poly roof went up on the greenhouse 12 months ago, and has had since day one, a water leak whenever the wind is blowing while raining. That happens more often than you might think.

Left is up, right is down, and the leaks seem to be in the same general areas as the condensation patches you can see on the left of the supports in the to panels at the top of the image.

We tried adding some rustoleum sealant along the edges and also noted that some of the screws were not completely seated, so those were tightened as well.

There is a bead of silicon between each of the 2′ panels, where they overlap. That is meant to stop water flow when the wind picks up the edge of the 2’x8′ poly sheet.
The stains on the wood supports are from the previous roof leaking… mostly. It is hard to tell what is an old leak stain and a new one after it dries.
Here is a closeup of that area

Water levels remain extremely low in the area and the local Quinte Conservation area is still declaring us to be in a drought situation. We have had and are getting rain right now, but as seen in this image, the Yarker waterfall dam/weir structure is well above the water line.. and normally it is below water.

Most trees have held out quite well (if they did not die outright) and the colours are on the way.

For those astronomers and others who do not get up before sunrise, just take a look at one of the spectacular views you are missing!
This was taken on the road, from inside the moving vehicle, Monday Morning. Wow. The digital image does not even come close to the reality of the dynamic range and colour saturation that the human eye does. Suffice it to say, it was even better live in person.

A couple of weeks later and things do not look nearly so bad. I’m talking about how the Saskatchewan Roughriders at 1 win 10 losses, last in the league then and now at 3 and 10, still in last place but very close to the Montreal Alouettes at 3 and 9.

Not that it help that much… we still have to pull ahead of the Edmonton Eskimos at 6 and 7 and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at 8 and 5 to get into the playoffs, barring some bizarre crossover.
I think most fans would accept another win to put us ahead of last years final tally.
That and stop swapping in and out so many players. Those of us attempting to keep track are sooo lost.

Looking at our summer rates of electricity her in Ontario Canada provided by the Hydro One Network (as it is a big political issue of late):
cents/kwh Low 8.7 Mid 13.2 and high 18.0

Add in the “Cost of transport and admin overhead” and those costs double. cents/kwh Low 17.4 Mid 26.4 and high 36.0

Assuming a 1kwh load 24/7 we get an average cost of electricity of 22.3 cents/kwh.
One day would be 22.3*24=535 or $5.35 over a 30 day month would be $160

We are actually averaging about 39kwh/day right now so that would be 39/24= 1.625 kwh each day on average.
$5.35*1.625= $8.69 /day
and over a 30 day month would be $260, which comes close to our average monthly billing.

If you are like us, you have already done every measure to conserve that you can, 10 years ago. And the literature keeps saying “replace your incandescent bulbs with CFL or LED”. We did that!

Of note, only 4 years ago in 2012
Low was 6.2 Mid was 9.2 and high was 10.8
and 2016 is
Low 8.7 Mid 13.2 and high 18.0

To determine the costs of transport and admin overhead, a bill breakdown from 2012 was:
electricity $102
delivery $81
other charges and taxes $44
to recap electricity was $102
other charges $125
totaling $227
so the given rates were only 44% of the total, where I estimated 50%.. so the number above should be viewed even worse.

Good news, bad news, the Quinte Airshow has returned after a 10 year absence.
I’ll start by saying, all-in-all, it was good news.
The airshow itself was great and the static displays were fantastic, as shown here below.
After a few flypasts, they landed and were put on static display:
The B25 Mitchell bomber on the left and the Avro Lancaster bomber, on the right.

The Mitchell is quite small… I was surprised at how small a “medium” bomber was. Then again, a little later (images to follow), I completely missed the B52 Stratofortress bomber. Parked next to it was a CF CC-177 Globemaster cargo plane, and it was *huge*.

B52 Stratofortress

The bad news side was the security travisty? Can I use stronger words for the security screening procedure which left 10000 people on the hot airport tarmac in the hot sun for an hour and 45 minutes? I wanted to seek out the organizers and put them at the back of that line.. Maybe that would instill some reality into their fantasy world.
As an exercise in military planning for very large missions, it was a failure in this respect. Was anyone from the last show stick on staff?
Simple arithmetic modelling would show you that your screening setup would be a major issue.
arrg!
Lineups for food and drink were 45-60 minutes. We anticipated that part and brought out own. However, after wandering through crowds of people for 10 minutes, we could find no water, no information and no program sales tents. An hour later we did find the program sales tent… still no water or other information.

Back to the good news… It was great to see a lot of air cadets onsite, as well as lots and lots and lots of people in general. Parking arrangements were not bad.. we headed off the 401 at 33 and had no traffic all the way into Trenton to the parking field. Buses got us to the base within 15 minutes.
The way back was a little dicier as we took the time after the airshow to visit the static displays on the way back across the base, and had not clue as to when the last shuttlebus was going to run back to the parkade. I think we caught one of the last ones, as we were certainly one of the last 50 vehicles still there.

We had a 10+ year old swingset here on this spot for the last few years. The top had disintegrated and broke, the seat was bad and we finally got rid of it.

In its place are two spankin new Adirondack chairs from Costco that we picked up a couple of months ago, and just this past week had time to sand down the pieces, add two coats of bright happy paint, and assemble them with glue and screws.

They should last for quite some time as two others we have have lasted a good 10 years already.

The oasis garden has a floor of weedcloth and peastone and has (off-frame) a small burning pot for fire in the chilly evenings (hence the pile of wood).

The chairs are very comfortable and sturdy. We don’t worry about them being out in the weather, although we will cover them up or bring them undercover shelter for the late fall, winter and early spring seasons.

and it will take some practice to get used to it. This run of Jupiter was 36ms exposures totalling 90 seconds and using the best 50% to stack. The best of them was this one around 22:18 EDT

Rumour has it there will be another astronomer with a better observatory, a better pier, and more astronomical type skills also starting to image planetary work with his new ZWO ASI120MC camera… and at a much lower cost than two years ago!

A news story today from
http://www.640toronto.com/syn/104/88985/hydro-rates-climbing-ont
***
It’s now going to be just a little bit pricier to do your laundry or run the dishwasher in the middle of the day.
The Ontario Energy Board says new rate hikes came into effect on Sunday, bringing the cost of using power during peak times up to 18 cents a kilowatt hour. The peak period hydro rate is in effect from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays
The mid-peak hydro rate, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., on weekdays, is increasing nearly half a cent to 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour.
The off-peak rate, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., is increasing less than half a cent to 8.7 cents per kilowatt hour.
The changes are expected to add a little more than $3 a month to the average bill.
***
And the real kicker is that this in only half of the total cost. Here in Ontario, the 18 cents/kwh is just for the actual power to be generated, we also get charged for delivery.

taking just the power costs $33+19+98=$150.
So in reality the actual power cost does work out to 49.7% of the total cost.
One source of prices in North America is here: https://issuu.com/hydroquebec/docs/comp_2015_en
This shows that Nova Scotia and PEI appear to have higher prices than we do.
San Francisco, Boston and New York are all about double our prices.
Montreal is the lowest listed, about 1/2 of ours.

Comments Off on Ontario Canada Electricity rates, highest in North America?

After a late night of imaging Jupiter, I was up early on Saturday morning with a coffee, brain not yet engaged, when I looked outside to see it still dark and clear skies!
Mars! Out I go to get i na few imaging runs before it got too bright. These were taken Saturday morning 2016 March 19th from 06:35 to 06:39 EDT (10″35 to 10:39 UT)
None are spectacular by any means, but they are probably the best to date as well.
Mars is 10″ arcseconds large; 2649 frames were capture at 11ms exposures over 30 seconds.
Nine images were taken like that and the last one for 60 seconds. The best 75% of the images were stacked and processed.

Our electricity rates in Ontario I believe are the highest in Canada.
We use time of day with 8.3; 12.8 and 17.5 cents/kwh at offpeak, midpeak and onpeak demand.
The problem is, that is only 50% of the price.. delivery and other charges double that to
16.6, 25.6 and 35 cents/kwh.
This breaks down as 12 hours of offpeak, 6 hours of midpeak and 6 hours of onpeak, average out as 23.5 cents/kwh (12*16.6+6*25.6+6*35=663/24=23.5) for 24 hour use for weekdays.
Weekends are all offpeak, so 16.6 cents/kwh
For 1 week it would average out to ((16.6*2)+(23.5*5))/7 = 22 cents/kwh

Every bill that comes through the door says to conserve! change your ways! replace your incandescent bulbs! Do dishes and laundry in off peak times!
Well, we do all of that, and have done all of that for 15 years. And the advice does not change.

So, incrementally we find other ways to conserve more. This weekend an old fluorescent light (that did not work very well… lots of flickering and 5-10 second time to on) was replaced with a 16′ LED rope light that we mounted around the inside frame of the pantry. It takes 3 watts! The old Fluoro was at least 40 watts. That will help a tiny bit. Not that much as the light is not on a lot. Maybe 1 hour/month

We also replaced a spinning hard drive in a computer that is always on with a solid state drive (SSD).
The spinning drive takes approx 10 watts when in use or idling. The SSD takes approx 0.2 watts.
The computer logs data 24/365 so in total that drive would use 10watts*24*365=87.6watthour=0.09kwh in a year.
That would cost $1927/kwh*0.09kwh= approx $173/year

In addition we have been slowly replacing compact fluorescent bulbs around the house with LED bulbs. A couple of reasons for this. The old CF often take a lot of time (1-2 minutes) to come up to full brightness. They also put out Radio Frequency Interference… a bad thing for our radio telescopes and SID systems.
The LED bulbs also use less power than the CFs.
One day we will put the killawatt meter on both and calculate out the differences.

The last big idea is to replace some of these data logging computers (that still take approx 50w) with smaller more energy efficient raspberry pi systems (maybe 2 watts).
50w/hour=0.05kwh/hour * 24 hours * 365 = 438 kwh/year * average price of $0.22 kwh = $1927*0.4= $423 per year

Another semi-annual rant against changing time. It is amazing how much inertia this has… created to save energy costs 100 years ago and people still think it is applicable and useful today. It is not.
Keep the time on standard time. Saskatchewan and a dozen other Canadian areas do it. There are no issues. There are certainly:
no increased risk of heart attacks the day after; no increased risk of traffic accidents; no increased risk of workplace injury.
For all those who want more daylight in the evening, there are those that prefer it in the morning. Who works 9-5 anymore?

Even in this day and age, the majority of our clocks require manual reset. At least the computers are working for the most part.